


Fathoms Below

by Novachester



Series: Fathoms Below [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Octopus Castiel, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:24:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1588214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novachester/pseuds/Novachester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's always known that he's not supposed to play by the shore, that it's dangerous. His father tells him there are monsters, but Dean's too old for that now. There's no such thing as monsters, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathoms Below

Ever since Dean could walk, he remembers his father telling him over and over, Don’t play by the shore, Dean. There are monsters there, and they’ll pick their teeth with you. John told him all sorts of horror stories about the little boys who got swallowed up by the creatures that lurked amidst the rocks, and so Dean spent the majority of his young life in fear and wonder of the rocky coast just beyond the edge of his family’s property, where the splash of the water against the rocks always seemed to call to him.

Dean’s ten years old the first time he disobeys, the first time he sneaks out while his dad’s at work and makes his way down to the rocky shore. It’s beautiful, the smell of sea salt air so much richer up close, and the waves splashing and carrying a mist through the air that Dean breathes in deep.

“Awesome,” Dean whispers, grinning. He’s closer than he’s supposed to be, about six feet passed the Danger sign his dad had always warned him to say behind, but it’s not enough. Dean wants to see it closer, feel more of it. He wants to drag his feet through the water and feel the weather-worn rocks beneath his hands, so he climbs down further, carefully scaling the rocks until he finds one flat enough to sit on.

It’s strange, to have spent his entire life living on the coast and to never have been this close. He pulls his sandals off and swings his legs over the edge of the rock, kicking them back and forth as the waves splash and wash over his feet, light reflecting bright and shimmering off the surface of the water.

Dean knows this is bad, that his dad would kill him if he found out, but he just got so tired of being told again and again that it was because of monsters. He knew the real reason, that the rocks could be slippery and if he fell in, he’d probably be a goner, but he wanted to prove he wasn’t some idiot who’d go and get himself drowned. He wanted to prove to his dad that he was as strong as he was brave.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean catches sight of something in the distance, further down the shore. He squints, thinking at first that it might be an animal, maybe a seal, but he’s struck horrified when he realizes it’s a person, slumped over and clinging to a large boulder, their body half-submerged.

“Hey!” Dean cries, carefully standing atop the rock. He brings his hands up to his face in a tunnel and shouts through them again, over and over, until the figure begins to move, groggily, as though waking up. “Heeeey!” He calls as he carefully navigates the rocks, nearly slipping twice. 

When he gets close enough, he sees that it’s a boy around his age with short, dark hair and sun-kissed skin. When he looks up at Dean, the boy’s eyes widen and in a flash, he disappears beneath the waves.

Dean’s heart stops. He’s running now, at least to the best of his abilities, dashing between the rocks. No, no, nonono! He thinks, panicking, wondering exactly how long it takes someone to drown. The boy looked so scared, and the last thing Dean thinks about before he dives into the water is how pissed his dad is gonna be.

Despite the warmth of the sun on the surface, the water is frigid. It steals the air from Dean’s lungs so viciously that he has to surface right away, gulping in a breath that’s part air, part sea water. He doesn’t let the burn stop him; he dives back down and swims frantically towards where he saw the other boy disappear, desperately struggling and pushing against the rocks as the waves repeatedly attempt to force him into them.

Nothing, there’s nothing. He tries going deeper, but every passing second makes him dizzier, and every time he tries to go up for air it becomes more difficult, his limbs made sluggish. The darkness around him is getting worse, and by the time he realizes just how much trouble he’s in, he can feel himself losing consciousness beneath the surface.

The last thing Dean’s aware of is the clutch of hands on his upper arms, and then everything fades away. 

It’s hazy the next time Dean opens his eyes again. He’s soaking wet and disoriented, but at least he’s not dead. The sound of the ocean is soft all around him, as though he’s tucked inside of a seashell, and there’s water dripping on him from the ceiling. Dean groans loudly, lifting a hand to rub his face. “Mom,” he whines quietly, aching all over, the fear he’d felt in the water hitting him for a second time.

From somewhere to his left, there’s a responding coo, like some kind of animal.

With another groan, Dean manages to push himself up into a sitting position, his head spinning. There’s light shining in from behind him, and once his head clears a little, he realizes he’s somehow wound up in the alcove he and Sam always play in. The rocks beneath him are warm, kept that way by hydrothermal vents spewing hot geothermally heated water. “Hello?” He calls out, and once again, there’s that noise again, a soft rumble from where the alcove deepens and leads into the water.

Peering into the shadows, Dean squints, and exclaims loudly when he sees the boy he’d tried rescuing earlier. “Hey!” He greets excitedly, a rush of relief helping to ease the ache in his head and his muscles. “Hey, you’re okay!”

For some reason, the boy is still in the water, half-hiding behind a jutting column of rock. He looks frightened, shying away the more excited Dean gets.

Dean frowns, softening his voice, like he would if Sammy were afraid. “You are okay, right? C’mon, I don’t bite. Look, I don’t even got all my teeth,” he says, pulling on his mouth to expose the gap on the right side of his mouth where he’d just recently lost his last baby tooth.

The boy looks at him strangely, clearly not understanding, and Dean lets out a frustrated little sigh, letting go of his mouth. “I can’t talk anything except English. What do you talk?”

There’s a moment of silence between them in which the two of them just stare expectantly, both waiting the other to make a move, but Dean is the first to lose patience. He crawls forward, stopping at the edge of the water, at which point the boy timidly pushes further behind the rock.

“My name’s Dean,” he says, pushing his hand through the water. “You got a name?” He asks, but there’s no response. Now that he’s a little closer, he can see the bright blue of the boys eyes, but more than that, he notices the dark marks near his temple, dark in color, but not quite bruise-like. They’re more like spots, and he’s got them on his shoulders, too—or at least what Dean can see of it.

Dean continues to flick his hand through the water, watching it ripple. “Did you save me?” He asks, but he’s not really expecting responses anymore. “I jumped into the water ‘cause I thought you were drowning. I was supposed to be the hero,” he says a little sullenly, but he’s not going to be bitter about it, not when they’re both alive and well. “Just don’t tell my dad, okay? He’d kill me.”

When Dean looks back up, he’s startled by how the boy is considerably closer than he’d been a second ago, staring at Dean with wide, curious blue eyes. “Whoa,” Dean gasps. “You’re a really good swimmer, huh?”

Much to Dean’s prolonged and increasing confusion, the boy clicks at him. It’s repetitive and rhythmic, and the way the boy furrows his brows makes Dean feel like he’s being asked a question.

Dean sighs. “You’re weird. Come out of the water,” Dean demands petulantly, wondering why he’s never seen this boy before, if he’s new to the town, or if he somehow washed up from somewhere else. Dean holds his hand out and has every intention of leaving it there until this strange boy takes it… which might be awhile.

After what feels like an eternity, in which Dean’s resolve beings to waver, the boy finally reaches forward and cups Dean’s hand in his own, wet and a warm. Dean’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline as he gets a good look at the hand, which seems to have something between each finer, like he’s wearing translucent gloves or something. Dean’s nose crinkles. “What’s wrong with your hand?” He asks, taking hold of it and probing curiously at the webbing.

The boy lets out another one of those coos, lips quirking, and it takes Dean a second to realize that he’s tickling him! At least there’s something kind of normal about him. Dean lets go of the hand and the boy pulls it back to himself immediately, poking the webbing himself and then looking back up to Dean with that same patient, bemused expression, as if he’s waiting for Dean to do something else strange and amusing.

“Are your feet like that too?” Dean asks, but remembers quickly that nothing he’s said has been answered yet, so he tries a different approach, hauling himself up to sit down and show the boy his own feet, pointing at them as he says “Mine,” and then pointing to the boy.

It takes a few tries, but eventually the question seems to set in, but what Dean ends up being shown is definitely not what he was expecting. Instead of feet, four thick, dark tentacles lift out of the water, coiled and moving with the same level of timidity.

“Whoa!” Dean gasps, and there’s a splash as the tentacles drop back down below the water, the boy jerking back in alarm at Dean’s surprise.

“No, no, wait!” Dean says hurriedly, quieting his voice. “Wait,” he says, and he holds his hand back out, imploring. There’s a tense moment where Dean thinks he’s going to disappear back into the water, but instead, the boy (is he a boy? Is this the kind of “monster” Dean’s dad had always warned him about?) hesitantly slinks back towards Dean. 

More nervous now than he had been before, Dean watches as their hands touch, the boys webbed fingers curling around his hand, and there’s a rush of adrenaline that makes Dean’s heart skip a beat. “Cool,” Dean breathes quietly, licking his lips. “Cool.”

Dean doesn’t tell anybody about it, not Sammy and especially not his dad, but he does keep going back to the alcove to meet up with his strange new friend. At first Dean’s not really sure what to call him, but he remembers that they met on a Thursday, and whenever he looks at his mom’s little calendar, he always sees the name Castiel written in pretty cursive over that date. 

He decides that it’ll do.

“Hey Cas!” Dean greets as he walks to the edge of the water, plopping down on the edge. He’s got a pile of books and some snacks in his backpack, both of which he’s been gradually introducing Cas to. Cas is smart, really smart. He understood day one that Dean had given him a name, and he responds easily to it. Likewise, Cas seems to have similarly named Dean, a succession of two clicks and a chirp for when he’s referring specifically to Dean.

Dean starts teaching things to Cas the same way he would teach Sammy, pointing to the pictures and saying the name of them. He tried to encourage Cas to say them too, but all he’d ever do is click, purr or gurgle in a tempo that mimicked Dean’s. 

Still, he at least understood what the words meant afterwards, and it wasn’t long before Cas was teaching Dean his own way of communicating, picking up rocks and clicking once, followed by a rumble. Dean couldn’t really do it, but when he tried, it made Cas laugh, and Dean liked that.

It’s weeks before Cas is comfortable enough to let Dean touch his tentacles, but after the initial couple of times, physicality between the two of them gets a lot easier. Dean’s not freaked out by the feel of suckers pulling on his skin, and Cas seems less disturbed by Dean’s feet.

Castiel’s body is nothing like Dean’s ever seen. His upper body appears completely human, while from the waist-down, he’s just a mess of squiggly, black tentacles, like an octopus, but there are definitely more them. It seems like he has six large primary tentacles for moving, while the rest are smaller and more task-oriented.

All of the teeth in the forefront of his mouth are sharp like a predators, while his hindmost teeth are flat, made for grinding and crushing. Dean’s not sure if it’s for plant matter or bone, but so far Dean’s only seen him eat when they share the snacks Dean brings. He finds out quickly that Cas really likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Weeks gradually turn into months, and before he knows it, Dean’s been Cas’s friend for a whole year. Dean’s spent a lot of that time teaching Castiel about humans and complaining about “the state of the economy,” which he doesn’t fully understand, but he knows it makes his dad really angry and it means that they have a lot less money than they need.

Cas doesn’t understand either, but Dean being sad is something he does understand, and he’s always ready to start a splash fight or use his tentacles to drag Dean into the water and play-fight with him in order to cheer him up.

When Dean’s birthday rolls around, he has great difficulty conveying to Cas exactly what that means. He’s only successful when he uses a picture book and points to a baby chicken hatching from an egg, followed by an image of a party, with confetti and presents, and then showing it on the calendar.  
Cas does understands what “presents” are, he himself being prone to bringing Dean neat shells or artifacts he finds in the ocean. After Dean finishes showing Cas what he got for his birthday, Cas suddenly disappears. At first Dean’s worried that he’s upset Cas, maybe made him jealous, but Dean knows Cas better than that, so what he’s left with is only anticipation as he waits for his friend to return.

When Cas finally does return to the surface, his cheeks are flushed pink-purple with and he’s smiling with pointed teeth, clutching something In his arms and tentacles, heavy enough that he needs more than just his arms to hold it up. When he drops it on the ground in front of Dean, it jingles loudly.

“Whoa, Cas, what did you find?” Dean asks. Castiel just coos excitedly, pulling on Dean’s pant leg and urging him to open it. When Dean does, his eyes widen. “Treasure!”

It’s a pile of it, gold coins and sparkling gems, wet and a little tarnished, but it’s treasure nonetheless, and Dean’s pretty sure this would more than help his dad kick the economy’s ass.

Cas makes a strange kind of yelp when Dean suddenly throws himself at him, wrapping his arms around Cas’s neck and hugging him tight as they fall below the surface of the water. Cas is quick to use his tentacles to push them back up, always particularly paranoid of Dean’s inability to survive underwater. 

Dean takes in a gulp of air, laughing as he does. “You rock, Cas!” He cheers, hugging tightly around Cas’s neck. “You rock, and you’re the best friend I’ve ever had!”

Cas knows what best and friend both mean, and as Dean says them, he feels Cas’s tentacles and arms curl around him all at once, accompanied by the series of excited clicks and chirps Cas makes against Dean’s neck, smiling wide and clearly pleased.

**Author's Note:**

> I do intend to continue this project, though I'm afraid it has no set schedule.


End file.
